[17] The star's surface has a magnetic field hundreds of times as strong as that of the Sun, generated by its thorough internal convection.

As a result of this significant magnetic activity, Wolf 359 is a flare star that can undergo sudden and great increases in luminosity, which can persist for several minutes.

[19] The first parallax measurement of Wolf 359 was reported in 1928 from the Mount Wilson Observatory, yielding an annual shift in the star's position of 0.407 ± 0.009 arcseconds.

[33] This process allows Wolf 359 to remain on the main sequence as a hydrogen fusing star for proportionately longer than one such as the Sun, for which helium steadily accumulates in the core and is not diluted.

The spectrum showed emission lines of Fe XIII, which is heavily ionized iron that has been stripped of twelve of its twenty-six electrons.

Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope detected 32 flare events within a two-hour period, with energies of 1027 ergs (1020 joules) and higher.

[26] The mean magnetic field strength at the surface of the star is around 2.2 kG (0.22 teslas), but this value varies significantly on time scales as short as six hours.

[24] In comparison, the magnetic field of the Sun averages a strength of 1 gauss (100 μT), although it can reach as high as 3 kG (0.3 T) in active sunspot regions.

[6] This low rate of rotation may have been caused by the loss of angular momentum through its stellar wind, which increases greatly during periods of flare activity.

[51] Approximately 13,850 years before the present day, Wolf 359 attained its minimal separation of about 7.35 ly (2.25 pc) from the Sun, and has been receding away ever since.

[52] Radial velocity measurements of the star in 2011 using the Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSPEC) instrument at the Keck II observatory did not reveal any variations that might otherwise indicate the presence of an orbiting companion.

This instrumentation is sensitive enough to detect the gravitational perturbations of massive, short period companions with the mass of Neptune or greater.

[53] In June 2019, an international team of astronomers led by Mikko Tuomi from the University of Hertfordshire, UK, submitted a preprint with the results of the first reported detection of two candidate exoplanets orbiting Wolf 359 using the radial velocity method from observations with HARPS in Chile and HIRES in Hawaii.

The as yet unconfimed Wolf 359 b, in contrast, is classified as a cool super-Neptune, receiving roughly a third to a quarter of the energy per unit area as Neptune does from the Sun.

[54] Further observations from the CARMENES survey have found that the radial velocity signal corresponding to the inner planet candidate Wolf 359 c is a false positive, resulting from the rotation of the star rather than a planetary companion.